Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Denyse O'Leary: Lying for God.


If it's a day of the week that ends in 'y', then Canadian ID hack Denyse O'Leary is fibbing about something. Let's pop in for a visit:

Apparently, Bill Dembski is taking some heat over the occasional use of some animated footage captured from the Internet that turned out to belong to Harvard: ...

Some innocuous video "captured from the Internet" that "turned out to belong to Harvard," is that all it was, Denyse? Gosh, it all sounds so trivial and unintentional, doesn't it? Hey, I know -- let's check in with someone who won't lie about the critical details:

[The Discovery Institute] grabbed the video, retitled it, removed the biological explanations for the phenomena, dubbed in a really bad, unprofessional narration on top of it, and stripped off the credits.

Yeaaahhhh ... those are the picky details you don't quite get if you just read Denyse's interpretation. Which is, sadly for Denyse, starting to become an unfortunate habit.

When Denyse finally arrives at the Pearly Gates, I'm guessing St. Peter is going to have some words for her. And not the good kind, if you know what I'm saying.

BONUS TRACK: More non-Denyse flavoured reality.

BY THE WAY, just so you truly appreciate the dishonesty here, here's plagiarist William Dembski defending himself (all emphasis added):

Back in September of 2006 I announced at my blog UncommonDescent that a “breathtaking video” titled “The Inner Life of Cell” had just come out (see www.uncommondescent.com/…/the-inner-life-of-a-cell). The video was so good that I wanted to use it in some of my public presentations, but when I tried to purchase a DVD of it (I sent several emails to relevant parties), I was informed it wasn’t ready (to my knowledge the video is still not available for sale in DVD or any other format — if it were, I would gladly purchase it and encourage others to do so). Moreover, at the time, the video did not have a voiceover explaining the biology of what was being shown.

Although the video was at the time and remains to this day widely available on the web (YouTube has many copies — go, for instance, here), most simply have some background music that do not explain the relevant biology. A few months after announcing the video at UncommonDescent, I found on the Internet a version of the video that did add a voiceover, giving the relevant biology, and was in a format that allowed me to incorporate it into my PowerPoint presentations. I used the video a handful of times, including at a talk in Oklahoma this September.

So, are we good here? Do we understand that Dembski is claiming that the original video had no narration or voiceover at the time, and that that situation apparently persisted for several months thereafter, which apparently gave him license to use another version with an unofficial (ID-oriented) voiceover? Do we all see that? Good.

So let's go back to that original post of Dembski's of September of 2006, where we find the following comment:

sagebrush gardener

09/05/2006

12:44 am

idnet,

Great animation but I wish it was ten times as long…

The video preview shown here is a three-minute condensed version. The full version has a voice over and is eight minutes long.

Why, yes, you are reading that correctly -- one of Dembski's own commenters is pointing out to him in September of 2006 that there is a full-length version of that video, and that it does indeed have a voiceover.

I believe the word you're looking for here is "busted." Or, in Dembski's case, "liar."

2 comments:

M@ said...

I guess someone should get her book, scan it in, take out the authors' names, give it the title "Dumb Things IDiots Say", highlight the exceptionally stupid passages, and distribute it as an e-book.

I wonder whether she would see that as "occasional use of written materials that turned out to belong to her"...

E in MD said...

Now, CC, be nice. We all know conservative types don't lie. Especially not about stuff they can use to push their own agenda. Perhaps Denyse and Dembski are just confused about the whole copyright thing....Yes that must be it.

We need to figure out what the definition of 'is' is. As in "the video preview shown here IS a three-minute condensed version. The full version has a voice over and IS eight minutes long.

Or "It IS only illegal, immoral or unethical if someone on the left does it".

Or perhaps just stupid enough to believe nobody would notice. If you tell a lie and none of your contemporaries is intelligent enough to figure it out does it make a sound?